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It’s
10:00 p.m. Thursday at Alameda’s Bladium hockey rink. Thirty
roller derby players prepare for battle — mouth guards, helmets,
skates, elbow and knee pads, jeans and T-shirts — as they
wait for a hockey team to clear the floor. On game nights, their
jeans and T-shirts give way to micro-mini skirts and fishnet stockings.
“You need personality to come out
three times a week with people you like and be willing to beat the
crap out of them,” says Kitt Turbo of the ShEvil Dead. Kitt,
a petite stay-at-home mom, and other B.ay A.rea D.erby Girls (B.A.D.
Girls) are quickly crushing misconceptions about roller derby under
well-worn wheels.
It’s a night for new recruits and
their numbers are growing — 10 of the women who skate into
the rink are newcomers, or “Rinky Dinks” as they’re
called in the league. They’re trying out for the Bay Area’s
newest derby league — a motley crew who are making a name
for themselves by redefining traditional roller derby.
“Old school roller derby was
co-ed and mostly for show,” says Kitt. “It was a B.S.
TV sport. We’re the first legitimate team — no one knows
ahead of time how the bout ends.”
Before the B.ay A.rea D.erby Girls started
there was the Bay Bombers, a derby league in existence since 1988.
The Bombers have been on hiatus for the past four years. They have
been training and advising the Austin, Texas team featured on the
A&E reality show, “Rollergirls.”
“There’s no difference between
the two teams — it’s still about sex, violence and beer,”
says Bay Bombers league owner Tim Patten, who’s film Jam is
making the film festival circuit. He claims that roller derby has
never been staged. “It’s always been real. How can you
control what two girls do out there?”
While the Bay Bombers have been on
break, the B.A.D. girls have been grabbing headlines and playing
before standing-room-only crowds.
Players straddle the line between burlesque
artists and professional athletes.
“Roller derby has always broken
the mold,” Patten says. “It was the first body contact
team sport that featured women, it was the first that included interracial
themes. What we see now is a continuation of what roller derby has
always been.”
Fighty Aphrodite, a new addition to the
B.A.D Girls, formerly of the San Diego Derby Dolls, says a derby
girl is “definitely strong, independent and opinionated with
a rock’n’roll edge. Certainly, someone who embraces
their femininity.”
That edge can be seen in the tattooed
and pierced players who step onto the track. Decked out in wild
make-up, micro mini-skirt uniforms and fishnets that match their
hard-core swagger, these women are as at home in the rink as they
are in their league pin-up calendar.
“I think it all goes along with
the idea of third wave feminism. We’re not the feminists of
the sixties, we’re not bra burners,” Fighty says. “You
can be athletic and you can be sexy. Most tennis stars are examples
of absolute sex appeal and athleticism.”
Patten, who has skated for more than 50
years, says “The whole reason that people first started coming
to roller derby is because of the women. It’s always exploited
women’s sexuality from 1936 to today — It’s women
skating in underwear, for god sakes.”
Roller derby has been around since 1935,
gaining mainstream exposure on television in the ’70s and
’80s. Originally, male and female teams would compete against
24 other teams on a banked track. Modern roller derby has only two
teams consisting of four to six players. Each team has one jammer,
identified by a brightly colored helmet, who starts the match behind
the blockers. The main objective is for the jammers to make it through
the pack after the whistle blows. The second lap is the point scoring
lap. The lead jammer in the second lap makes a point for each opposing
teammate that she passes. Most jams can last up to 90 seconds.
New school roller derby is catching
on. Two sold-out bouts kicked off the new season for the B.ay A.rea
D.erby Girls. The A&E reality drama “Rollergirls” profiles teams from the Texas league, The Lonestar Rollers. The
show focuses on roller derby champions the Holy Rollers, who dress
as Catholic school girls and skate in well-publicized derby bouts.
Since the show aired, Patten says there have been more than a million
hits to the Bay Bombers Website, with more women expressing interest
in joining.
B.A.D. Girl Kitt Turbo sees the show
as both good and bad for the sport. “They’re giving
us a lot of publicity,” she says. “I don’t know
what to say to people who come up to me and ask ‘Is that what
you do?’ It’s a shame that the first big show about
roller derby is a drama. We want the world to see our bouts, we
don’t want them to see our bickering.”
Fighty Aphrodite is more direct. “If
I thought it were something that promoted roller derby as an actual
sport I would support it. No one has any idea from watching [“Rollergirls”]
what the rules are,” she says.
The B.A.D. Girls, established in 2004,
emerged from the same grassroots punk rock do-it-yourself tradition
of the leagues that formed in Seattle and Austin in 2001. The league,
which originally had about five members, has two teams — the
ShEvil Dead and the Oakland Outlaws. Beer flows freely at packed-house
bouts that feature bands and extravagant half-time shows with punk
rock cheerleaders and wild skateboard stunts.
Members hope to split the league
into four teams and expand throughout the Bay Area. In February,
they competed against other Women’s Flat Track Derby Association
teams at the Dust Devil tournament in Arizona. It was the first
game played outside the league.
“In the beginning I didn’t
know how far it would go,” says Ghoulina, an Oakland Outlaw
and original league member. “I joined because I love skating
and being active. Now we’re going somewhere, we’re going
to Tucson.”
Roller derby players don’t make
money. Women play for the love of the sport and the comradery.
“Dedication is a big part of it,”
says Ghoulina. “We get a lot of girls.”
Both teams in the league practice together
at the Bladium and at Oakland’s Dry Ice Rink. Some players
travel from as far as San Jose three times a week for two-hour practices.
“Priority-wise, derby comes first,”
says Fighty. “I schedule my work and school schedule around
practice. I am a classically trained actress, and with acting I
gave it 110 percent. This is my new passion, so it gets 110 percent.”
Eventually B.A.D. Girls aspire to be a
professional league.
“I’d love to see roller derby
played in parks and high schools,” Kitt says. “It would
be cool if it ended up being the first professional sport ‘owned’ by women.”
For more information, visit www.bayareaderbygirls.com
E-mail Denieal Williams at denieal.williams@gmail.com
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